Zero Food Waste Act

Key Points

• The bill creates a competitive grant program run by the EPA to help states, local governments, tribal governments, and nonprofits reduce the amount of food Americans waste. The target is cutting food waste in half by 2035 compared to 2015 levels.
• Congress would authorize $650 million per year for ten years (fiscal years 2026 through 2035), totaling $6.5 billion, to fund grants for food waste studies, data collection, and waste reduction projects.
• Grant money can be used to support a wide range of activities, from rescuing surplus food for people in need, to upcycling food scraps into new products, to building anaerobic digestion facilities. Cities and states could also use grants to make it more expensive to dump food in landfills and cheaper to recycle it.
• The bill gives funding priority to communities of color, low-income areas, and tribal communities that have been hit hardest by pollution and health problems, directing environmental justice benefits toward historically overburdened neighborhoods.
• Grant recipients must report results back to the EPA, and the agency must publish annual reports for Congress tracking whether the program is actually working to reduce waste.